Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: On the fifth day in the trial of US v. Kouri,
Speaker 2: right after the defense left the fundraiser for the Georgetown
Speaker 2: University Athletic Department in small pieces on the floor of
Speaker 2: the courtroom, the attorneys for Amon Kurry asked the judge
Speaker 2: for a sidebar. They wanted to call a witness, a
Speaker 2: surprise witness who the defense team had somehow persuaded to
Speaker 2: make an appearance. She's in the bathroom, Howard T. Shrebnick
Speaker 2: told the judge. I just wanted to let you know.
Speaker 2: They just whispered to me that she's coming. I didn't
Speaker 2: want you too.
Speaker 1: His voice trailed off.
Speaker 2: The prosecutors in the case from the US Attorney's office
Speaker 2: were there in the sidebar too, standing right beside Shrebnick.
Speaker 2: And it is safe to say this sudden revelation came
Speaker 2: as a shock to them. They weren't expecting this particular
Speaker 2: witness to show up. They were counting on her not
Speaker 2: showing up, and now she was here in the bathroom.
Speaker 2: Fuck then, Howard says, and we're going to propose to
Speaker 2: introduce text messages that she wrote back in May of
Speaker 2: twenty fifteen, text.
Speaker 1: Messages fuck.
Speaker 2: My name is Malcolm Gladwell, you're listening to Revisionist History,
Speaker 2: my podcast about things overlooked and misunderstood. This is part
Speaker 2: two of the story of my favorite court case of
Speaker 2: all time, usv.
Speaker 1: Coory.
Speaker 2: In part one, which you should listen to first if
Speaker 2: you have not already, we talked about how Roy Black
Speaker 2: and Howard Strebnick were presented with an impossible case a
Speaker 2: client who openly admitted to giving one hundred and eighty
Speaker 2: thousand dollars in cash in a brown paper bag to
Speaker 2: the Georgetown University tennis coach in order to get his
Speaker 2: daughter admitted to the school. Days one, two, three, and four,
Speaker 2: the trial had been a disaster for the defense. Am
Speaker 2: and Curry seemed destined for prison, but by the end
Speaker 2: of the Georgetown massacre on day five, Howard and Roy
Speaker 2: had managed to introduce an element of doubt into the
Speaker 2: minds of the jury. What exactly is or isn't a bribe?
Speaker 2: And are the dubious actions of a wealthy man worse
Speaker 2: than the dubious actions of a wealthy university.
Speaker 1: This episode is.
Speaker 2: About what happened in the afternoon on day five, the
Speaker 2: aftermath of the Georgetown massacre.
Speaker 1: The mystery witness entered text messages.
Speaker 2: What were the talk about the during the trial. What
Speaker 2: you feel were the most significant turning points.
Speaker 3: Most trials don't have one thing like that, but things
Speaker 3: just developed. You know, the more you worked on it,
Speaker 3: the more we got into the case, the more facts
Speaker 3: we learned, the more details, the better it looked.
Speaker 2: I talked with Roy Black when we met at his
Speaker 2: offices in downtown Miami. Roy is a trial lawyer. He
Speaker 2: and his partner Howard are maybe the greatest defense team
Speaker 2: of their generation. They construct elaborate narratives out of mountains
Speaker 2: of complicated facts. They are not mystery novelists who tell
Speaker 2: stories with a clever twist on the last page. Things
Speaker 2: just develop. But then Roy Black thought about it a
Speaker 2: little bit and he said, well, actually, I take it back.
Speaker 1: There was a knockout bunch. It was the mystery witness.
Speaker 3: I mean to me, that was like an extraordinary event
Speaker 3: at the trial.
Speaker 2: From the very beginning. And Howard had a problem. They
Speaker 2: could show that Georgetown was a corrupt institution where the
Speaker 2: lines between admissions and fundraising had been all but obliterated.
Speaker 2: That was the point of the Georgetown massacre. But that
Speaker 2: didn't resolve their problem.
Speaker 3: If we say, okay, the whole system's corrupt and our
Speaker 3: client took advantage of the corrupt system by paying money,
Speaker 3: what are we doing. We're admitting that our own clients corrupt.
Speaker 2: The Georgetown massacre, in other words, didn't win them the case.
Speaker 2: It simply leveled the playing field. They needed something more,
Speaker 2: another layer to their argument, proof that Georgetown was worse
Speaker 2: than Amon Curry. And in the first few difficult days
Speaker 2: of the trial, when the government was running roughshod over
Speaker 2: at Amon Curry, Howard and Roy began to drop little
Speaker 2: bread crumbs.
Speaker 1: They were cryptic.
Speaker 2: Chances are the jury missed them. But if you read
Speaker 2: through the trial transcripts, all twelve hundred pages of them,
Speaker 2: and you pay attention, it's obvious something is afoot. The
Speaker 2: first inkling came during an offhand moment in Roy's cross
Speaker 2: examination of a Georgetown admissions officer named Meg Licy. Once again,
Speaker 2: we have our wonderful voice actors dak Shephard and britt Marling.
Speaker 4: Listen, isn't it a fact that at Georgetown you have
Speaker 4: a software called Salesforce? Don't you.
Speaker 5: Not that? I remember?
Speaker 4: Isn't it a fact that you have an investigation into
Speaker 4: the net worth of the parents of potential students.
Speaker 2: The prosecution jumps up immediately objection, which in retrospect was weird.
Speaker 2: What was it about the mention of that word sales
Speaker 2: force that led the government to stand up abruptly and
Speaker 2: say stop no. But the judge won't have it overruled.
Speaker 5: I don't know about that.
Speaker 1: Lyce denies any knowledge. Roy moved on.
Speaker 2: Then, at the end of the Georgetown massacre with Brenda Smith,
Speaker 2: he tries again. He leads Brenda through a long series
Speaker 2: of questions about fundraising. She's evasive in her answers. Then
Speaker 2: Roy asks, out of the blue.
Speaker 4: Does Georgetown use a program sales force?
Speaker 5: It is my understanding that they do.
Speaker 4: And what is salesforce?
Speaker 5: It's a customer relations management tool.
Speaker 2: Roy follows with a few more questions than he says.
Speaker 4: All right, well, let me then show you a document
Speaker 4: marked in you.
Speaker 2: Roy is just about to put a document on the screen,
Speaker 2: a document that he is desperate to show the jury.
Speaker 2: His finger is literally on the clicker, but just as
Speaker 2: he does, the prosecutor jumps up again objection. The judge
Speaker 2: agrees sustained under the rules of a trial, if you
Speaker 2: have evidence you want to show to the jury. You
Speaker 2: have to find a witness to authenticate it, someone who
Speaker 2: will say it's real. That's what Roy is trying to
Speaker 2: do with Brenda Smith, get her to say, yes, I
Speaker 2: know all about that, but he's shut down. Your honor
Speaker 2: objection sustained. You have what you think is a knockout punch,
Speaker 2: and you can't show it to the jury. Plan A foiled.
Speaker 2: So what do you do? You go to Plan B.
Speaker 2: The mystery witness and the text messages a little bombshell
Speaker 2: dropped in the middle of the sidebar.
Speaker 4: Your honor, we call Katherine Coury.
Speaker 2: There had never been any indication during the first few
Speaker 2: days of usv. Coory that the person at the heart
Speaker 2: of the case, the person on whose behalf Aman Curry,
Speaker 2: had paid one hundred and eighty thousand dollars in cash
Speaker 2: to the coach of the Georgetown tennis team, would show up.
Speaker 2: The government's lead prosecutor made this clear in his opening statement.
Speaker 2: He told the jury, we're not here because of the
Speaker 2: defendant's daughter. You're going to hear about her grades and
Speaker 2: her test scores, the fact that she wasn't very good
Speaker 2: at tennis. But to be clear, we're not here because
Speaker 2: of Katherine. We are here talking about Catherine because of
Speaker 2: the crimes the defendant committed outside of her formal application process.
Speaker 2: So during the trial, we're going to ask you to
Speaker 2: focus on the defendant's actions and his words and those
Speaker 2: of his co conspirators. In other words, the prosecution wanted
Speaker 2: to make a case about Katherine Courry's shortcomings as a
Speaker 2: tennis player and student without the awkwardness of actually having
Speaker 2: Katherine speak for herself. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,
Speaker 2: we would prefer if katherine career remains an abstraction. But
Speaker 2: of course, if you are the legal team of Black
Speaker 2: and Shrebnik and you sense a certain reluctance on the
Speaker 2: part of your adversaries to confront the person at the
Speaker 2: heart of the case, what do you do You convinced
Speaker 2: the person at the heart of the case to make
Speaker 2: an appearance.
Speaker 3: I would say the one thing that stands out that
Speaker 3: really made a huge difference was the daughter testifying, introducing
Speaker 3: the text messages with her father. I mean, to me,
Speaker 3: that was like an extraordinary event at the trial, and
Speaker 3: I thought it was really a great part of the case.
Speaker 2: Why is that? Explain to you why you think that
Speaker 2: testimony would have been so powerful for the jury a
Speaker 2: couple of reasons.
Speaker 3: Number one, in terms of POI and speaking, she had
Speaker 3: such authenticity about her. I know that authenticity is like
Speaker 3: a cliche these days, but she came across very well
Speaker 3: as a witness Number one. Number two, The government amazingly
Speaker 3: change after her testimony. Never changed their theory of the case.
Speaker 1: Ah.
Speaker 2: Yes, the theory of the case, the explanation given for
Speaker 2: the nature of the crime. The government laid out their
Speaker 2: plan of attack with their very first witness, Timothy Donovan.
Speaker 2: Remember him from the Boozy Dinner at the Capitol Grill.
Speaker 2: He played on the Brown tennis team way back when
Speaker 2: with Amon Curry and Gordy Ernst. He ran and still
Speaker 2: runs by the way an outfit called Donovan Tennis Strategies,
Speaker 2: whose goal, according to its website, is to help parents
Speaker 2: with quote successfully navigating the college recruiting process end quote.
Speaker 2: Donovan helps tennis players avail themselves of the back door
Speaker 2: that elite colleges reserve for tennis players. In the Coury case,
Speaker 2: that meant he was the bagman who picked up the
Speaker 2: money for Aymond. Coury got twenty k for himself and
Speaker 2: delivered the brown paper bag to Gordie Ernst's wife. The
Speaker 2: government gave immunity to Timothy Donovan, and Donovan in return
Speaker 2: provided them with their theory of the case. Listen to
Speaker 2: this excerpt from Donovan's testimony on day two of the trial.
Speaker 2: He's being questioned by one of the prosecutors.
Speaker 5: Did there come a time when you discussed with the
Speaker 5: defendant whether Catherine would in fact play on the Georgetown
Speaker 5: tennis team. Yes, what did you discuss about that?
Speaker 4: He said that she didn't have any plans to play
Speaker 4: in that as a matter of fact, that you know,
Speaker 4: her old shoulder injury would kick in and she'd be
Speaker 4: unable to play for that reason.
Speaker 5: And based on how the defendant described Catherine's old shoulder injury,
Speaker 5: what was your understanding as to the nature of that injury.
Speaker 4: That was not legitimate, that it was a story that
Speaker 4: would allow her to not play.
Speaker 2: The prosecution painted a picture of a conspiracy, Gordy Ernst,
Speaker 2: Timothy Donovan, and Amon Curry conspiring to deceive Georgetown into
Speaker 2: thinking they were getting a real tennis player. And what's more,
Speaker 2: Amon Curry and his daughter Catherine conspiring to fake an
Speaker 2: injury so she would never have to reveal how unworthy
Speaker 2: she actually was of playing tennis at Georgetown University.
Speaker 6: So when the daughter gets to the school as a
Speaker 6: tennis admission, she then doesn't play tennis.
Speaker 2: This is Jackie Purchek, one of the Black Shrebnik partners
Speaker 2: who worked on the case.
Speaker 7: She doesn't go to practice and never practices with the team,
Speaker 7: and never play tennis. And so the government fed off
Speaker 7: of that to come up with this theory that she
Speaker 7: knew all along that this was paid for admission, because
Speaker 7: otherwise she would have shown up to play tennis.
Speaker 2: This was the theory on which the prosecution based its case,
Speaker 2: and it came gift wrapped and tied with a bow
Speaker 2: from Timothy Donovan. Why would they advance the theory about
Speaker 2: the daughter having never talked spoken to the daughter because
Speaker 2: they had the fact that she never as Jackie just said,
Speaker 2: she never went to play tennis, So they just assumed.
Speaker 3: See what I think what happened with the case is
Speaker 3: that remember they have a slam dunk all along, you know,
Speaker 3: fifty five or fifty six cases, how many They didn't
Speaker 3: think that this was going to be a problem at all.
Speaker 3: They thought the client was going to plead guilty to
Speaker 3: begin with, and then then he didn't. Then I guess
Speaker 3: they got ready for Troyal. I don't think they took
Speaker 3: it that serious.
Speaker 2: I don't think they took it that serious. On some
Speaker 2: unconscious level. I think Howard and Roy were offended by this.
Speaker 2: It was a slight People from Miami take particular umbrage
Speaker 2: at the condescension of fancy lawyers from Boston with their
Speaker 2: high falutint manner and Ivyley pedigrees. Thus the dramatic sidebar
Speaker 2: when the stiletto that they had brandished during the Georgetown
Speaker 2: massacre was inserted a little deeper. We have Catherine Coury,
Speaker 2: the person you didn't think belonged to her, and we
Speaker 2: have her text messages which you somehow didn't think were
Speaker 2: going to be an issue.
Speaker 1: Then a long.
Speaker 2: Pause when the news registers with the prosecution, a sharp
Speaker 2: intake of breath, and a silent scream that echoes across
Speaker 2: the courtroom full The direct examination of Katy Curry was
Speaker 2: conducted by Howard, not by Roy, which makes sense. Roy is,
Speaker 2: as I've said, an apex legal predator. You don't let
Speaker 2: the grizzly bear play with your grandkids. This one was
Speaker 2: Howard's responsibility. Howard is not just the intellectual half of
Speaker 2: Black Shrebnik. He is the warm and fuzzy half. Howard
Speaker 2: is the one most likely to address as Santa at
Speaker 2: the Black Shrebnik Christmas Party. Howard has a daughter of
Speaker 2: his own, whom I'm quite sure has Howard wrapped around
Speaker 2: her little finger. Katy Curry was twenty five at the time, tall,
Speaker 2: long brown hair, generous smile when she's smiling, but she's
Speaker 2: nervous when she emerges from the bathroom. She clearly does
Speaker 2: not want to be there. The adults in her life
Speaker 2: have made a dreadful mess of things.
Speaker 8: The momentum continued to build when the daughter gets on
Speaker 8: the witness stand, the government having married itself to a
Speaker 8: theory that the daughter was a fraud, essentially that her application.
Speaker 1: Was a fraud.
Speaker 2: Howard starts quietly and calmly, tell us how old you are?
Speaker 2: Easy questions to answer, where do you work? You went
Speaker 2: to graduate school? Where only when she seems comfortable does
Speaker 2: he get to the heart of the matter. Once again,
Speaker 2: we've asked our voice actors to read from the transcript.
Speaker 4: Okay, Catherine, growing up, did you play tennis?
Speaker 5: I did yes, okay?
Speaker 4: And who taught you how to play tennis?
Speaker 5: My dad?
Speaker 4: And how old were you when you learned to play tennis?
Speaker 5: Oh, I want to say I was maybe about five
Speaker 5: six years old.
Speaker 2: Her voice is soft. At one point, the judge tells
Speaker 2: her to speak up.
Speaker 4: Okay, And your dad, when you said you would play
Speaker 4: tennis with your dad, was it just hitting the balls
Speaker 4: or was there anything more instructive about the relationship the
Speaker 4: tennis relationship with your dad?
Speaker 5: Well, so, yeah, my dad is an amazing tennis player.
Speaker 5: He did play at Brown and so I guess in
Speaker 5: a way we had not only a father daughter relationship,
Speaker 5: but in a lot of ways he was my primary coach.
Speaker 5: I mean he would help me with the drills, techniques,
Speaker 5: My serve, which was the weakest part of my game,
Speaker 5: was set up cones around the tennis court and try to,
Speaker 5: you know, would boost my tennis skills. So it was
Speaker 5: something he enjoyed and also something he encouraged me to
Speaker 5: work hard on.
Speaker 4: How passionate was he about playing tennis with you.
Speaker 5: I think it was one of our favorite things we
Speaker 5: did together.
Speaker 2: Howard pauses and has one of his paralegals put up
Speaker 2: a photo on the screen. It's Catherine and her father
Speaker 2: side by side at the tennis court at their country club.
Speaker 4: Of all the people on the planet Earth, who is
Speaker 4: the person with whom you played most hours of tennis
Speaker 4: in your lifetime?
Speaker 5: My dad.
Speaker 2: They talked about high school. She went to a very
Speaker 2: small private school in Massachusetts. Eight players on the tennis team.
Speaker 2: She was number six, mostly played doubles. Her grades were good,
Speaker 2: not great. Then they get to the subject of college.
Speaker 2: Where did she want to go? Boston College or Northeastern?
Speaker 2: Did she think she would play tennis at those schools?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 2: What about Georgetown? Well, she had never thought about Georgetown
Speaker 2: until she ran into Gordy Ernst at a July fourth party.
Speaker 5: I mean he basically said, you know, I'm Gordy Ernst,
Speaker 5: a friend of your dad's, and I'm a tennis coach
Speaker 5: at Georgetown, and you know you should like, have you
Speaker 5: ever thought about playing tennis at Georgetown? It could be fun?
Speaker 4: And what did you tell them?
Speaker 5: Wow, that sounds amazing and I we'd love that, but
Speaker 5: I don't think I'm good enough.
Speaker 4: And what did he say?
Speaker 5: He said, Well, you know, train hard and maybe you could.
Speaker 2: She began playing more tennis. She began to take her
Speaker 2: tennis more seriously. She got excited. The idea was that
Speaker 2: she would practice with the team, but red shirt for
Speaker 2: a year. She got an acceptance letter from Georgetown, Howard
Speaker 2: put it on the screen for all the court to see.
Speaker 1: She was in.
Speaker 2: She thought it was all her doing, her talent and
Speaker 2: hard work. The back and forth between Howard and Catherine
Speaker 2: is building slowly. Everyone on the jury must know something
Speaker 2: is about to happen, but they don't know what it is.
Speaker 2: And Howard is in no hurry to tell them. He's
Speaker 2: just content to let her talk and let her credibility,
Speaker 2: her authenticity, sink in. And then finally, I.
Speaker 4: Want to talk to you now about some of your
Speaker 4: family circumstances that arose in May of twenty fifteen, this
Speaker 4: after you've been accepted at Georgetown. Do you know what
Speaker 4: time period I'm talking about? During the months of April,
Speaker 4: in the first week of May, your parents, Melanie and Amon,
Speaker 4: did you understand them to be still married and living
Speaker 4: as a family.
Speaker 5: I did until like the second week of May.
Speaker 4: Tell the ladies and gentlemen of the jury what you
Speaker 4: learned in the second week of May.
Speaker 5: So in the second week of May, I was actually
Speaker 5: in a tennis match. I believe it was a match
Speaker 5: and not a practice. My mom had flown from Florida
Speaker 5: to Middlesex, which wasn't uncommon. She liked to visit us
Speaker 5: a lot. But you know, I could tell that something was.
Speaker 4: Wrong up until that moment moment in time. Did you
Speaker 4: have any idea that your parents were divorcing? No? How
Speaker 4: did it affect your feelings towards your father?
Speaker 5: I was really very angry with him for that decision
Speaker 5: to leave the marriage.
Speaker 4: And how did you express yourself to.
Speaker 5: Your dad with tears and anger and some mean words.
Speaker 5: I had lost respect for him at that moment in
Speaker 5: time and was Yeah, I felt I felt betrayed.
Speaker 4: How was your mom handling it?
Speaker 5: She was not handling it well at all. She was
Speaker 5: you know, it broke her, for lack of a better word.
Speaker 2: And then Howard puts the text messages Catherine said to
Speaker 2: her dad up on a big screen for the whole
Speaker 2: court to see.
Speaker 4: I made tent you described your dad to directly to
Speaker 4: him that he's pathetic, yes, and hoping there will be
Speaker 4: a day when he'll be strong again.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Next page, Keith. This is two days later, on May twelfth,
Speaker 4: you write to him, I wasn't the one who traded
Speaker 4: our family for the feelings of being young again. You're
Speaker 4: a grown man. Don't equate my actions with yours. Just
Speaker 4: from that statement, it's a parent how selfish you are?
Speaker 5: Yes?
Speaker 4: Is that how you felt at the time?
Speaker 5: Yes?
Speaker 4: Had you ever felt that way about your father before? No, Keith,
Speaker 4: go to the next page. Do you recall your dad
Speaker 4: trying to explain himself in you telling him you have
Speaker 4: not done anything wrong? Lol? Laugh out loud. Yeah, next
Speaker 4: page you tell your daddy's clueless and you have no
Speaker 4: interest in associating with him. Is that right?
Speaker 5: That's correct, Keith?
Speaker 4: If we could go to the next page.
Speaker 2: At which point the judge interjects how many pages is this?
Speaker 2: And Howard says fifteen more. The judge says fifteen more, Yes,
Speaker 2: your honor, fifteen pages, And when it ends, Catherine Corey
Speaker 2: explains where her anger left her.
Speaker 5: Well, you know, tennis was something that my dad and
Speaker 5: I shared. When I thought of tennis, I thought of
Speaker 5: my dad and I wanted nothing to do with him.
Speaker 5: At that point, I was disgusted and hurt, and I
Speaker 5: was basically like, you know, screw it. I feel like
Speaker 5: you've ruined the sport for me. I think of you
Speaker 5: when I'm out there, and I'm not going to follow.
Speaker 5: You know, we keep on following your leads and everything
Speaker 5: when you don't set good examples. To be honest, it
Speaker 5: was just too painful to be out there with those reminders.
Speaker 2: So when she got to Georgetown, she didn't join the
Speaker 2: tennis team. She didn't play the sports she loved. And
Speaker 2: it had nothing to do with her shoulder. It had
Speaker 2: to do with her heart.
Speaker 4: When was the last time you played competitive tennis?
Speaker 5: May like right before?
Speaker 4: And did you have you ever since played tennis?
Speaker 5: Not really? Maybe one day I want to love the
Speaker 5: sport again, you know, like I don't want to just
Speaker 5: I used to love it. And you know, one day,
Speaker 5: when hopefully we've found peace and a stable, you know,
Speaker 5: familial unit, I will be able to be at peace with,
Speaker 5: you know, playing the sport that reminds me of my dad,
Speaker 5: that does hold so many good memories again.
Speaker 2: The lawyers for the US Attorney's Office called Katie Coury
Speaker 2: a mediocre tennis player when Georgetown's specialty was mediocre tennis players.
Speaker 2: They said she got into Georgetown because her dad was rich.
Speaker 2: But recruiting rich kids for the Georgetown tennis team was
Speaker 2: what Georgetown did as a matter of course. And then
Speaker 2: they threw her under the bus a third time. They
Speaker 2: said that she had been involved in a conspiracy with
Speaker 2: her father to fake an injury, and that just wasn't true.
Speaker 2: Back at the top of episode one, I said that
Speaker 2: I asked the US Attorney's office to talk to me
Speaker 2: about the Coury case and they refused.
Speaker 1: Now I know why.
Speaker 2: Because they went home and tried to wash their hands
Speaker 2: and the stink wouldn't come off. Closing arguments in the
Speaker 2: case of USB Coory came the next day. Roy did
Speaker 2: the honors for the defense.
Speaker 3: I came up with this walking over to the courthouse,
Speaker 3: goes trying to figure out how to make these text
Speaker 3: messages as dramatic as possible, And it doesn't come across
Speaker 3: in the transcript. But what I did is I picked
Speaker 3: up the exhibits and I walked over to the defense
Speaker 3: table and stood in front of Corey and read every
Speaker 3: one of those text messages, looking him.
Speaker 4: In the eye.
Speaker 1: I mean the text is from his daughters.
Speaker 3: Yeah, where she's calling him every name in the book
Speaker 3: and how I hate you and all this stuff.
Speaker 1: And I'm andy as you did. That was in tears.
Speaker 6: Yes, yeah, all of us.
Speaker 4: So there's the jury.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there, this is Roy Black.
Speaker 4: There's the jury. There's the judge.
Speaker 8: Corey is standing sitting right where you are. By the way,
Speaker 8: my daughter was sitting right behind him and Corey. Sophie
Speaker 8: was watching the trial and my son okay.
Speaker 3: And your son yeah.
Speaker 8: And Roy who's talking to the jury.
Speaker 9: And it's right there we have the transcript and stands
Speaker 9: literally the distance four feet from Am and Corey, and
Speaker 9: he's reading to Am and Corey and they're right here.
Speaker 8: You can read him out loud into the.
Speaker 1: Micro into the tape each one of those texts.
Speaker 8: Roy stands up, Well, why don't you read it?
Speaker 4: Roy?
Speaker 1: This is the actual closing heartment quote.
Speaker 3: The night of my graduation is supposed to be a
Speaker 3: fun celebration. I don't think it will be of you. Come,
Speaker 3: Lexi and I are not doing that well. I hope
Speaker 3: that you know that your family won't be able to
Speaker 3: exist peacefully together, and don't spend another holiday together. I
Speaker 3: will forever blame and resent you and have zero interest
Speaker 3: in sharing vital parts of my life with you. That's
Speaker 3: what Katie Corey was saying in the summer of twenty fifteen,
Speaker 3: not making up some story about her shoulder injury.
Speaker 2: The courtroom is absolutely still, and royg just keeps going
Speaker 2: right in front of his client, face to face. And
Speaker 2: so what's happening, Well, the jurors were crying, but the jurorsy,
Speaker 2: you didn't see that, but we did.
Speaker 8: The juror cry.
Speaker 2: So there, so explain to me psychologically, what's happening with
Speaker 2: the jerks the cry? What conclusion are they drawing from
Speaker 2: the from the emotion in that moment?
Speaker 3: Well, I think that they're all parents. Can you imagine
Speaker 3: getting messages like that from one of your children about
Speaker 3: how catastrophic, how tragic, how emotional that would be. And
Speaker 3: the reason why I wanted to do that is to
Speaker 3: show that there was simply no way that this girl
Speaker 3: was being controlled by her father and would go and say, Okay,
Speaker 3: we're now getting into Georgetown on this fake admission, and
Speaker 3: I'm going to fake a shoulder injury. It's just that
Speaker 3: it was just such a powerful, tragic thing to get
Speaker 3: from a child.
Speaker 8: What I thought happened was it now became a contest
Speaker 8: between this prosecutor and Katie Kury, who was the jury
Speaker 8: going to rule.
Speaker 2: For Roy's closing argument didn't last very long. It didn't
Speaker 2: have to. He just said, you know why the prosecution's
Speaker 2: case makes no sense because they didn't know about the
Speaker 2: text messages. The jury acquitted Am and Kury on all counts.
Speaker 2: They couldn't distinguish between what Am and Cury did and
Speaker 2: what Georgetown did. I think they must have wondered what
Speaker 2: they had been dragged into a full on trial in
Speaker 2: a federal courthouse that ended up being about a daughter's
Speaker 2: broken heart and a father's tears. Oh and all taking
Speaker 2: place on a tennis court, Which is the question that
Speaker 2: got me interested in usv. Koury in the first place.
Speaker 2: The other half of the case, the half I write
Speaker 2: about in Revenge of the Tipping Point. Since when do
Speaker 2: we care so much about games like tennis that prosecutors
Speaker 2: and elite universities and rich men and their daughters make
Speaker 2: at the staging ground for their ambitions.
Speaker 9: By the way, one more moment that no one knows
Speaker 9: about because we were there and it didn't happen in
Speaker 9: the courtroom. We walk out of the courtroom with a
Speaker 9: not guilty verdict, we encounter some of the jurors right
Speaker 9: outside the courtroom.
Speaker 8: Aim and Corey is standing next to me. The juror
Speaker 8: is standing five feet away. She looks over to mister
Speaker 8: Corey and she says, take care of your daughter.
Speaker 2: Vision's history is produced. Wait, we're not done. What about
Speaker 2: the mysterious Salesforce document? The document Roy kept trying to
Speaker 2: get Georgetown witnesses to say, yes it exists or yes
Speaker 2: it's real. What was it?
Speaker 6: Yeah, Salesforce they kept a database where people were and
Speaker 6: they have like they had like targets. So if this
Speaker 6: person is worth this amount of money, my target is
Speaker 6: to get them to donate this amount. And they would
Speaker 6: keep track of contact with the family and what they're
Speaker 6: going to ask for it, And they kept us in
Speaker 6: a database internally in a Salesforce database at the school
Speaker 6: for each parent.
Speaker 2: It uses a sophisticated set of software to analyze thousands
Speaker 2: of people and figure out who among them is the
Speaker 2: best target for a fundraising call and what that person's
Speaker 2: and this is the term that is used, capacity might be.
Speaker 2: It looks at patterns. Families that have given a lot
Speaker 2: tend to be those who will continue to give a lot.
Speaker 2: Then there's a question of the individual's ties to the institute.
Speaker 2: Do they have a child at school there that helps
Speaker 2: a lot, or if they are an alum, what did
Speaker 2: they do while on campus. Turns out a connection to
Speaker 2: athletics is a top indicator for future giving. Needless to say,
Speaker 2: this kind of algorithm would really really like Aim and Kouri.
Speaker 2: After Catherine was admitted, before she had even set foot
Speaker 2: on campus, the admissions officer who handled her application sent
Speaker 2: an email to someone in the development office, are you
Speaker 2: able to give me giving for aim and Kuri? Meaning
Speaker 2: can we run him through the algorithm? And they do
Speaker 2: and put it all in an internal document. Why was
Speaker 2: Georgetown so reluctant to admit to the existence of the
Speaker 2: mysterious salesforce capacity report because their capacity estimate for the
Speaker 2: Kouri family was, shall we say awkward, one to five
Speaker 2: million dollars. When the so called victim Georgetown is lining
Speaker 2: up the so called perpetrator for one to five million.
Speaker 2: The victim doesn't really look like a victim anymore, do they.
Speaker 2: It looks more like they're in on the grift.
Speaker 4: So yeah, they were.
Speaker 3: They nobody would agree to it, So we mentioned that
Speaker 3: the jury, the jury knew it existed, but never got
Speaker 3: to see it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, way, so for you, you you.
Speaker 1: Saw you did you have the docum?
Speaker 3: Yes, we have the document.
Speaker 6: Then after the trial.
Speaker 10: There's the not guilty verdict, and that night or the
Speaker 10: next day, the New York Times or somebody calls Roy
Speaker 10: for a comment and Roy comments on the trial, and
Speaker 10: in part the comment was, there was this Salesforce.
Speaker 6: Document and the target for the corries was one to
Speaker 6: five million.
Speaker 11: And now Georgetown, who during the trial, is saying, I
Speaker 11: don't know what document you're talking about, and no witness
Speaker 11: will own to the document, and no witness is prepared
Speaker 11: to testify about it. After Roy makes the comments, the
Speaker 11: lawyers for Georgetown send an email saying, Hey, why are
Speaker 11: you talking about our Salesforce document. There's a confidentiality order
Speaker 11: in the case and you're not supposed to be talking
Speaker 11: about our documents. And at the trial, nobody's owning the document.
Speaker 11: After the trial they're all upset that Roy's talking about
Speaker 11: their document. Roy writes back, I mentioned it in opening
Speaker 11: and can I And he writes back to the group
Speaker 11: in capital letters, sore.
Speaker 10: Loser, to the lawyer, to the Georgetown lawyer, Oh my god.
Speaker 11: When we all got that email, I was like bagging
Speaker 11: the desk. That's hard.
Speaker 2: It was awesome.
Speaker 4: Usv.
Speaker 2: Courry, best trial ever or maybe second best trial ever,
Speaker 2: because there was another federal case that I fell in
Speaker 2: love with while writing my book, Revenge at Sipping Point.
Speaker 2: It's the basis for the chapter entitled The Trouble with
Speaker 2: Miami usv. S Forms, involving a shadowy nursing home operator
Speaker 2: from Miami Beach who looked like Paul Newman, drove around
Speaker 2: town in a one point six million dollar Ferrari dated supermodels,
Speaker 2: and in a weird coincidence, was so obsessed with getting
Speaker 2: his diminutive son onto the University of Penn basketball team
Speaker 2: that he gave large amounts of cash in a gym
Speaker 2: bag to the Penn basketball coach who represented that shadowy
Speaker 2: Paul Newman look alike in a Ferrari handing out bags
Speaker 2: of cash to IVY League coaches.
Speaker 1: Ten Guesses.
Speaker 2: Region's history is produced by Nina Birdlowawrence with ben ad A. F.
Speaker 2: Haffrey and Lucy Sullivan. Our editor is Karen Schakerji. Fact
Speaker 2: checking by Sam Russick, original scoring by Luis Gerra, mastering
Speaker 2: by Echo Mountain Engineering by Sarah Buguer and Nina Bird Lawrence.
Speaker 2: Production support from Luke LeMond. Voice acting by Dak Sheppard
Speaker 2: and Britt Marlin.
Speaker 1: Thank you, guys.
Speaker 2: Our executive producer is the incomparable Jacob Smith. Special thanks
Speaker 2: to Sarah Nix. I'm Malcolm Bobwell.